When Your Only Tool is a Hammer

Why, an old joke goes, are you hitting yourself with the hammer? Because, ha ha, it feels so good when I stop.

This has become the only consolation to the continuing disaster of Mr. Bush, his idiot war, and his anti-democratic misleadership. He will eventually be gone, along with his war-mad band of rapture-nuts and chickenhawks, and no matter what the prevailing conditions, everything will feel so much better.

There will, however, be no cessation of the pain and suffering until they’re gone. The Democrats have proven pathetic, actually granting more powers to Bush and his dim-witted and pathologically dishonest Attorney General. “Hey master Bush, can we help you swing that hammer?”

The Republicans have all accepted their marching orders and are spreading the no-think mantra about how well the war is going now. Victory’s in sight, they say, just around corner number 3,649. Hammer, hammer, hammer….

Anyone who tries to point out the inanity of it all is accused of terrorist-love.

Iraq has oil â€” lots of it. It also has water in a part of the world that is running out of water. And the dismemberment of Iraq will unleash a mad scramble for dwindling resources that will include the involvement of neighboring states.

The Kurds, like the Shiites and the Sunnis, know that if they do not get their hands on water resources and oil they cannot survive. But Turkey, Syria and Iran have no intention of allowing the Kurds to create a viable enclave. A functioning Kurdistan in northern Iraq means rebellion by the repressed Kurdish minorities in these countries. The Kurds, orphans of the 20th century who have been repeatedly sold out by every ally they ever had, including the United States, will be crushed.

The possibility that Iraq will become a Shiite state, run by clerics allied with Iran, terrifies the Arab world. Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel, would most likely keep the conflict going by arming Sunni militias. This anarchy could end with foreign forces, including Iran and Turkey, carving up the battered carcass of Iraq. No matter what happens, many, many Iraqis are going to die. And it is our fault.